"This, then is our desert:
to live facing despair,
but not to consent.
To trample it down under hope in the Cross.
To wage war against despair unceasingly.
That war is our wilderness.
If we wage it courageously,
we will find Christ at our side.
If we cannot face it,
we will never find him."

Friday, 6 December 2013

Deserving of great praise, but ........all this hysteria?

The tributes to the late Nelson Mandela are flooding in - most of them are richly deserved; although one couldn't suppress a degree of ironic laughter at U.S. President Obama's contribution - what he said was mostly, of course, about himself..Certain (not insignificant) reservations about his record in office notwithstanding, Nelson Mandela was certainly among the most influential and remarkable statesmen of his and our time and has left a lasting legacy of courage, generosity and a commitment to genuine reconciliation and the healing of memories following the appalling trauma of apartheid, not just in his homeland of South Africa but throughout the world. That by itself is so (genuinely) unique an achievement as to rank him among the very highest.Yet, of course, to detract from the occasion, the western media is reacting to the clearly not unexpected news of his death with all the hyperbole and hysteria to which we have all now become accustomed [one particularly crass headline can be found here] : hence this delicious piece of satire from Eccles & Bosco:

"Methuselah dies

Today the World was in a state of total shock as it was announced that veteran activist and leader Nelson Methuselah had died at the tender age of 969.....". [here]

I particularly like the last photo caption:

"Have YOU left flowers? If not, we know where you live!"This is the ending of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem: it seems in many ways appropriate: